Donning a U.S. military uniform designed to look like what soldiers wore during the Civil War, David Harkleroad said he wanted to bring history to life.

That’s why he and other reenactors with the 78th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Company F from Freeport on Saturday were wearing Civil War-style uniforms and showcasing an array of artifacts and replicas from the time at the Allegheny-Kiski Valley Heritage Museum and History Center in Tarentum.

“History is generally seen as a bunch of dates, names and facts we’ve had to memorize for tests from grade school on,” he said. “It’s not presented in a real and meaningful way.”

Reenactors such as Harkleroad, who serves as the military coordinator for the Freeport-based reenactment group, are trying to make history “more relevant and real to people,” he said.

During Saturday’s program, Harkleroad said he hoped to make history feel “more real and more relevant” by showing people tangible artifacts and highlighting the Alle-Kiski Valley connections to the Civil War.

“Generally, people think of the Civil War as something that happened in the South or on some battlefield like Gettysburg,” he said. “But they don’t think about how it affected every town, North and South. The people participated came from their communities and hometowns, like Freeport.”

The 78th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Company F, which the Freeport-based reenactors represent, mustered and trained in Kittanning. They fought in the Western Theater during the war.

“We’re trying to bring home to the local communities that this was something real and happened right here in their communities,” Harkleroad said.

Reenactors on Saturday were on hand to show visitors weapons from the Civil War, examples of uniforms that would’ve been worn by both sides and examples of food soldiers ate at the time, said Mike Huston, who serves as the group’s president.

The reenactment organization has about 20 or 30 members, he said, and participates in about a dozen public events each year.

The group also raises money and collects donations at events for the American Battlefield Trust, which works to preserve lands that saw battles in any conflict fought on American soil.

There’s also a social element, Harkleroad said, and members join for a variety of reasons. Many, he said, were inspired by larger reenactments they had seen around anniversary celebrations or because of an interest “in what could be argued as one of the most defining periods in America’s history.”

Wendy Rankin, who coordinated Saturday’s event, said she has enjoyed exploring the possibilities of how she could represent women from the era.

“It is very interesting, the different backgrounds and things you can come up with in the Civil War,” she said.

She also said she was excited to find a personal connection. She loves crocheting, which came out of the Civil War, she said.

Saturday’s event also featured a presentation from Cindy Crytzer, who authored a book called “A Civil War Husband” about her own family’s history during the war.

“It’s a book of letters that were written by my great-great-grandfather back to his wife and five daughters,” she said, adding that the book delves into what happened to her great-great-grandfather’s family after he died at Andersonville Prison in Georgia during the war.

Her relative, Thomas Dunevan Nelson, was from Plain Grove, Lawrence County, and served with the Pennsylvania 100th. They were nicknamed “The Roundheads” because many of its members were of Scottish descent.

“Mostly he talks about the letters that he gets and the letters that he sends,” Crytzer said of Nelson’s letters memorialized in her book. “He talks about prayer meetings and money. He talks about the areas where he was.”

Crytzer said she spent six years transcribing the letters “word for word, letter for letter” and researching additional family history to put together the book, which is available online at her website and on Amazon.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)